Feds Eye Social Security Benefits Guarantees

Analysts at the Congressional Budget Office say protecting holders of individual Social Security accounts could be complicated.

The analysts have published a report analyzing the possibility of providing various types of living benefits guarantees, such as minimum income guarantees, for account holders in the kind of semiprivatized Social Security system that President Bush has envisioned.

The analysts use 2 mathematical techniques, the binomial lattice method and the Monte Carlo simulation method, to estimate how much a simple, hypothetical guarantee program might cost.